


White Means Death and Innocence

by thesudokukid



Series: Wildcard!Five [1]
Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Gore, Non-Binary Runner Five, Season 3 Spoilers, Zombies Make, background 5am, implication of suicidal ideation, season two spoilers, spoilers for okumura's palace
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-24
Updated: 2020-07-24
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:40:02
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,172
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25495492
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thesudokukid/pseuds/thesudokukid
Summary: Wrote this for the Zombies, Make! prompt "Here Comes Trouble" and am posting it now with minimal editing.The events of the afternoon that Runner Five finally manages to take down their white whale, the Reaper.
Series: Wildcard!Five [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1847332
Kudos: 4





	White Means Death and Innocence

**Author's Note:**

> For future reference, Five is wearing a Big Sister suit from Bioshock 2. They follow the usual pattern of green means friendly, yellow means alert, and red means danger. This Five is still an nb even though their Metaverse costume's afab in nature though.

“Here comes trouble,” Sam says.

They can all see the Reaper in the rearview mirror. After several failed attempts of trying to beat it “without cheating” they finally decided to try letting it ‘ambush’ them.

Why?

  
“ _I’ve got a skill on one of my Personas that means we can apply Heat Riser to the whole team if we get ambushed,” Five said._

_“Oh, fair enough,” Sam had replied. And nothing more had been said about it._

Five’s been preparing for this for ages. The Phantom of Abel’s been leaving them “helpful tips” that are really just passive aggressive notes about how to make the Reaper. Probably because Five’s exhausted its patience by trying to fight their great white whale. The Reaper.

The porthole on Five’s helmet starts glowing with the greenest of greens the second it looks like the Reaper’s going to hit them.

When the Reaper does strike them Five starts cackling with glee and jumps out of the car.

“Again?!”

The light glows even more green and Five summons the Persona that has the skill they need.

“Someone’s getting their ass kicked in this fight but for once it _won’t_ be us.”

Five is absolutely smirking under there.

They change between Personas with a practiced, fluid ease that’s an absolute beauty to behold.

\----

There are a few mishaps, like Five waiting too long to cast debilitate which ends with somebody fainting.

Five takes things a little more seriously from then on but is still quite probably smirking when they make their moves.

The way the two of them are nearly a hive mind comes in handy here. Sam can read Five’s body language like it’s a beginner’s book.

Ultra charges, the defense boosting skill when it’s about to drop, and at one point curing their despair ailment. The feeling of their combined effort is like nothing else.

The music shifts to one of Five’s favorites. A soaring ballad about friendship and teamwork. Especially fitting now. The air is practically humming with Five’s joy at hearing it. Which has the effect of both helping them think more clearly and keeping them on task.

Five gains a 5 point boost to each of their stats that they don’t comment on which is good because.

“Er, Five, the Reaper’s going to attack soon.”

“Shit!”

They immediately switch to one of their best Personas resistance wise and guard. The others, well used to the routine by now, guard too.

The attack hits and luckily doesn’t kill anyone though it does leave Jody on the edge of fainting.

Five’s instinctive action is to jump into their healing Persona and fix it.

“Might be best to extend that defense boost, don’t you think,” Jody asks..

“Yeah, please, thanks. Sam how much do we have left,?”  
“It’s just got a bit more, it looks like,” Sam says.

He jumps in before Jody who’s next and heals everyone up a bit, just in case it takes longer than they expect.

“Thanks,” Five says.

The Reaper’s defeated five minutes later with Five’s now traditional shout of “Die for me!”

Five heals everyone again after the battle’s over even though they’re probably pretty drained as an apology for everything they went through.

“It turned out worth it in the end,” Jamie says. “I’m just glad you beat the stupid thing so we can focus on something else now.”

All their levels jump up by about two and Five starts cheering and holding their hand out again.

Morgan jumps up to tap their hand with his Not-a-Cat’s paw.

“That was awesome,” Morgana says .”Just, maybe let’s be more careful next time.”

“Yeah, agreed,” Five says. They’re starting to get a bit put out so Sam gives them a high-five too. (He was going to anyway of course because he always does when they’re leaving Mementos but beating Death itself is worth an extra high-five or two.)

They come across a note at the next safe area congratulating them on beating the Reaper, giving them some pointers, and also kind of begging Five not to get into the habit of fighting the fuckng Reaper.

“So do you think they know us or something,” Five asks. “God I hope it’s not the person that killed Sosa. That’d be creepy and sad.”

“Mostly creepy considering how he died It was at the end of New Canton’s Family Day wasn’t it?”

“His wife said he wanted to start making amends with a public apology,” Five says. 

“He was a terrible man,” Morgana says. “But it seems he’d at least managed to rediscover his sense of honor after we changed his heart.”

“Talk about an awful way to die,” Jamie says. “No one deserves that in front of their own bloody kids, not even the scum of the earth.”

“I still can’t believe that someone killed his Shadow,” Sam says. “Like I know it happened and that they probably had an easier time of it because we took out a lot of the security on our way through but if I had to pick a way to die, mental shutdown wouldn’t be in the top ten, y’know?”

\---

They all shudder remembering the way Esteban’s eyes rolled back into his head and he started vomiting his blackened guts out in front of every child in New Canton.

Even worse still was that it had been broadcasted on the radio. And that as a result, meant that it had probably traumatized every child living within a twenty mile radius. A radius that unfortunately included both Abel and Red Settlement which cut most of its ties with Abel shortly after the broadcast.

They’d all written their own public apology which the Major insisted on seeing though she shouldn’t have known about them at all..

She called them into Janine’s farmhouse and lectured all of them for their behavior. Five and Sam got the worst of it. being seen as the leadership behind the action.

It didn’t matter what they said, she’d told them, until they could prove otherwise, England as a whole would see Abel as guilty until proven innocent.

Suddenly Five’s insistence on charging after the Reaper made a lot more sense.

“I’m sorry for bringing up what happened,” Sam says.

The green light of Five’s porthole dims quite a bit and then clicks over to yellow. Now he’s gone and made them sad.

“It’s okay,” Five says in a voice that makes it obvious _they_ aren’t.

They kick at the stone under their feet once and then look around like they’re about to cross a street.

“We should go collect some more supplies,” Five says. “Or else the Major might just put a stop to Mementos runs completely.”

The reserve team, full of energy, gets up first.

“Showtime,” Five says. Then they walk down the stairs to handle the comparatively minor problem of an abusive manager’s Shadow self.

Looks like he’ll be giving Five a hug instead of a high-five to cap things off today. Or maybe it’ll just follow the hug. He hasn’t quite decided yet.

**Author's Note:**

> I'd like to think this was a pretty good fic even apart from the "written in 90 minutes bit".


End file.
